


The Darkness Within

by ASOUEfan



Series: Mixed Mildred One-shots [1]
Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Boss/Employee Relationship, Control Issues, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotionally Repressed, F/F, Femslash, Loss of Control, Obsessive Behavior, Sexuality, era appropriate fear/repression of sexuality, forced drug taking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASOUEfan/pseuds/ASOUEfan
Summary: As the latest nurse trainee, you're keen to learn from the Head Nurse Mildred Ratched. She's smart, quick witted and sharp tongued. Maybe you're guilty of spending too long watching her, wondering what else that tongue can do.But now she's noticed, and Nurse Ratched will go to extreme lengths to coax the confession from you she wants.
Relationships: Mildred Ratched/Reader, Mildred Ratched/You
Series: Mixed Mildred One-shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178909
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	The Darkness Within

Prompt 2

Millie with the drugs in the drug cupboard

The glass bottles are organised not just by type and usage, but by volume and colour of the glass. It’s a thing of beauty, in it’s own way, when one has a system that is organised and efficient. Mildred Ratched had sat on her bed in the Motel and drawn maps of it - the drug cupboard - until it satisfied her every need. Putting her plan into place had suffered the setback of Nurse Bucket, but Mildred made sure she too was in the end, convinced.

So when she’s filling the pill pots in a rhythmical fashion, no need to consult the patients drug cards for she had already committed them to memory, Mildred is comforted by her design of it all. That sense of knowing what will happen with the next pot, and then the one after that. It feels like one is seeing the future, and is able to control it.

“Doesn’t Mr Murphy get his blood pressure pill in the evening? Not the sedative?” You frown, watching her work. It doesn’t exactly feel like work, following a woman like Mildred Ratched around all day and learning from her; she's smart and sharp-tongued and sometimes you stare out of the window wondering what else her tongue can do.

“Oh, I wasn’t aware you were qualified as a pharmacist,” Mildred coos, her tone darkly taunting as she tilts her head just so.

It’s enough to know you’ve spoken out of turn. But you’ve been clutching the drug cards and reading them to learn the medications and their uses, and you’re _certain_ she picked the wrong bottle. You wouldn’t want her to make a mistake, so shouldn't you speak up? “I’m not, I’m a Nursing Apprentice,” You qualify, cheeks burning shamefully. “We so have, _some_ teaching on -“

“That is right, you are an Apprentice, while I am the Head Nurse, am I not?” Mildred cuts in, intending her words to sting. 

You ease back half a step, skimming your fingers down the counter top. You peer at the card again. You’re _sure_ it shouldn't be a sedative. You can read. “Yes Nurse Ratched,” You reply anyway, and replace the card in the holder. “Mrs Cartwright next…?” Flicking through the cards you slide it out and offer to her, like she’s trained you to do, even if she doesn’t seem to look at them.

“I’m sorry, but your tone betrays you.” Mildred snatches the card from your fingers and steps close, her eyes hard and unrelenting. “You don’t respect me.” The toes of her shoes touch yours. Her arms stretch out either side of you until her reaching fingers grasp the counter top, trapping you in her sights. “Do you?” Mildred lifts her eyebrows, though her eyes roam your expression for weakness. Any twitch of a muscle, any faltering of your professional smile.

You recoil as far back as your spine allows. “I do -“ You protest in earnest, hurrying to reassure her, but your voice fails you. Her lips are red like glacé cherries and they’re so close you can almost taste the peach she devoured at break time, and you want to taste it too.

“No, you don’t,” She breathes, shaking her head at you in astonishment. Like a precious stone turned over on the beach, washed and thrown about in the sea until it’s polished smooth, you should stand out proudly among the many grey pebbles of Bucket’s nursing staff. Mildred had hired you herself. And yet here you are, lying to her. Her voice drops low. “I don’t like that.”

You chest heaves making your breathing shudder hotly - and Nurse Ratched notices. She notices everything. “I’m sorry you think that, Mil -“ You freeze. “Nurse Ratched. I do respect you, truly I do.”

Mildred jerks back, speechless. “You would use my given name?” She says incredulously. Her eyes dart aside, then down to her hands which both clasp and unclasp repetitively. “In your thoughts, you think of me as, Mildred.” She seems to want to check.

You shake your head, chancing an escape from her arms while she’s as shocked as she is. “It was a slip of the tongue it won’t happen again,” You apologise, yelping as you accidentally knock over the amber glass bottle of pills, scattering them to the floor like tiny hailstones plinking on the tile.

“Oh I don’t doubt it,” Mildred says smoothly, watching them spill but not moving to save them. “I’ll wager that tongue slips all sort of places, now doesn’t it?”

The merest of gestures from her and you drop down to clear up your mess, pinching the little white pills one by one collecting them in your palm. You’re glad of it, at least down here she can’t see the terrible flush to your cheeks and neck and _other places_ , her insinuations have caused. “Not at all I promise I’m a good girl -“

“Actually I think you’re quite the opposite,” Ratched deduces, holding the bottle down to you. Your hand brushes hers as you cup your palm around the neck of the bottle, to try and safely tip the tablets inside.

You feel the backs of her fingers graze along your jaw, tempting your eyes up to her. She’s gaining on you, and there’s not a thing you can do. Even if there is, you know you won’t. Mildred can _see_ you and it’s as glorious as you’d imagined. Beneath the titles and the uniforms, you’re a woman, and so is she, and you know by the way your thighs are aching that she knows this pain too. You brush your cheek into her fingers, wanting to lose yourself to it. 

“I saw the way you looked me, during your interview. I see the way you’re looking at me now,” Mildred smiles, triumphantly having coaxed what she wants to see. “And I thought to myself, how far would you go, to keep such a thing private?” The soft touches fall away, and all of a sudden she’s gripping your chin in her finger and thumb and shoving tablets in your mouth. “That you’re no better than the patients we are treating. That at any moment you could be stripped of your rank and placed into the same programme to cure you of your deviance.” She spits, holding onto you as you struggle against her.

She's pinching your nose and covering your mouth and you’re gagging; how many sedatives did she force onto your tongue? Her knee jabs into your shoulder and fights your flailing as you thrash in suffocation - until your throat gulps needing air - but gulps down the pills instead. Mildred watches the rings of cartilage on your throat move as you swallow, and she calmly steps away, rubbing her palms dry of your secretions on a paper towel. “There now.”

You push to your feet in panic, coughing and pounding your chest with your fist as the bolus of pills sticks in your gullet. “Mildred, please I-I’ve tried not to think of it. Of you - ” You cough some more, eyes watering - or maybe those are just tears. “Please don’t tell -“

“Oh come now, don’t fret,” Mildred murmurs, wrapping her arm around your shoulders and smoothing your mussed hair straight. You’re trembling, and maybe you’re about to pass out, or convulse or die, but she's holding you and you weep on her chest at how wonderful it is. You’re mercifully being given this one moment to know what it feels like, to just be in her arms. “I’ll keep your secret.” She takes a long breath in, and cradles you to her chest like the precious gemstone she knows you to be. “But you must promise me to be loyal. In all things.”

Sniffing, you ease back a little to look at her. “I swear.”

Delighted, Mildred releases you. She’s fumbling inside her uniform and presses a ring of keys into your hand. “I am staying at a roadside motel named the Sealight Inn. These are the keys to my lodgings.” She closes your hand over them, for you’re looking a little pale. “I will let you off duty early, so you may move your belongings from the nurses accommodation here to my room.” 

You can hear her, but the ringing in your ears is getting louder, and the sides of your vision are staring to blur somewhat. Something cold and jagged digs into your palm. Whose keys are these?

“Are you at least following what I am saying?” Mildred snaps.

“Yes, yes Nurse Ratched.” The words spill obediently from your lips. “Move my things to your Motel.” Your left leg buckles as she grabs you under the elbows propping you up, stronger than her willowy frame gives her credit for. “But my head is - “

“You’ll regurgitate those pills before you pass into a coma, otherwise you’ll certainly be of no use to me,” Mildred instructs, controlling your slow slide down the cabinet until you’re sitting on the floor in a daze. Your limbs don’t respond, your eyes glaze, and you’re only vaguely aware Mildred is cupping the back of your head and pressing a glass bottle to your lips. “Drink this,” She urges, tipping the thick black liquid between your lips. “That’s it, drink it up.”

You gag at the gritty texture, but it works. Not even half the bottle is gone before you double over, violently vomit a mixture of charcoal and half dissolved sedatives, groaning at the splattered mess you’ve created. But Mildred tends to you, holds your forehead and dabs the beads of sweat at your neck as though she were not the orchestrator of it.

“Nurse Ra-?” You croak, smearing the black drips from you chin.

Tears gather in the corner of Mildred’s eyes. She’s so lost in her happiness, she doesn’t fight the emotions that slip through the usually impenetrable facade. “Ssshh, don’t try and talk sweetheart, your throat will be sore.” 

“Why…?” You cough and shake, arms jerking of their own accord before lying limply in the lap of your ruined uniform.

Mildred dabs the sides of your mouth. “I’ve waited so long, you see.” She’s smiling and laughing, sniffing through her own wondrous tears as she gaze at you. “And now I’m not alone.” Mildred strokes your hair and your cheek, leaning in as her hands slip to the top button of your dress and pushes it thought the eyelet, undoing it. Then the next, and the next, and her nose is nudging yours coaxing you to return her affections. “There was no way I would let you slip through my fingers.”


End file.
